


The One Where Justin Cries All Winter

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [10]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Car Accidents, Caretaking, Deaf Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epilepsy, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV First Person, POV Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Seizures, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 19:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15201563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: "Brian says I'm crying all the time," I said.Technically, what Brian said was more along the lines of, "I really should have gone with my gut your last allergy season and bought stock in tissues, because for God'ssake,Justin, pull yourself together," but Brian's way of expressing concern is an acquired taste.





	The One Where Justin Cries All Winter

**So what made you decide to try therapy again?**

I squirmed on Lydia's scratchy couch. After the whole incident at Babylon last spring I was having a ton of nightmares and generally doing a really shitty job dealing with what it turns out is not actually a normal amount of violent encounters to have survived in your first twenty-five years of life, go figure, so I did therapy for a while, and it helped.

I remember I thought Brian was joking when he suggested I get a Deaf therapist. For some reason I thought...I don't know, that they couldn't exist. But Brian looked at me like I was crazy when I laughed at the suggestion and asked if I really wanted an interpreter sitting in on my sessions with me and, you know, obviously I didn't, and then we found Lydia. And in five sessions I was all fixed up so I didn't come back.

And now here I was again.

 **Brian says I'm crying all the time,** I said.

Technically, what Brian said was more along the lines of, **I really should have gone with my gut your last allergy season and bought stock in tissues, because for God's _sake_ , Justin, pull yourself together** but Brian's way of expressing concern is an acquired taste, and Lydia probably needed the translation.

 **Are you?** Lydia asked.

**I guess so.**

**Do you feel sad a lot?**

I thought about that for a while. Thought about Brian telling me, just a couple days before the start of the winter that he would, years later, refer to as _that stretch where you were on the rag for three goddamn months_ , that I was happy. How I'd felt when he'd said that. How I hadn't understood how something could be that right and that wrong all at the same time.

 **It's not that simple,** I said.

**

I guess it really started two months before I was sitting in Lydia's office when I dreamed Chris Hobbs ripped my arms off. It's always something like that. A meditation on a theme. I guess I should appreciate the variety.

I must have been quiet through most of the dream, because my arms were well and truly detached by the time the light switched on and Brian sat me up on the side of the bed. **Jesus Christ,** he said, kneeling in front of me. **Take it easy, come on.** He stopped signing then because he needed to hold onto my shoulders to keep me from, I don't know, collapsing and rolling off the bed. 

“F-f-fuck,” I probably managed.

He pushed my hair off my forehead and wiped away the sweat. He rubbed my arms roughly, like I was cold and he was trying to warm me up.

 **What the fuck was that about?** he asked.

A thing Brian doesn't know is that I've had nightmares every night since the bashing. No one knows that. Nowadays they're usually nothing big, and I don't even really think about them or remember them. I just feel kind of freaked and out of sorts for a little while after I wake up, and Brian just think I'm cranky in the mornings and leaves me alone. He only knows about the ones where I wake up screaming.

It's just easier that way.

 **I can't breathe,** I said.

**Yes you can.**

I shook my head.

 **Come on, have I ever been wrong about this?** He put his hand on my chest. **God, your heart's going fast. Easy, come on. Come on back now.** He wiped my tears away and kissed me. **You're okay,** he said. **You're just fine.**

 **What day is it?** I asked. I end up asking him that a lot after nightmares, usually over and over. People think Brian is such an intolerant asshole, but God, sometimes I'm fucking floored just thinking about how patient he is with me. 

He gave me the oddest look, then, like he was sad and amused all at the same time. **It's Christmas, Sunshine.**

Oh.

**

Eight hours later we were knocking on the door of Debbie's house, my enormous bag of presents in hand. Debbie opened the door and greeted us each with a crushing hug, and Carl shook our hands and took our coats. Gus just nodded to us from the couch, like the world's youngest sullen teenager that he totally is, but J.R. bounded over and did the whole sticky bear hug situation. I scooped her up and kissed her and Brian rolled his eyes while he interpreted her whole monologue about the new toy cash register she'd gotten that morning.

 **She's a businesswoman already,** Lindsay said. The grammar wasn't exactly right, but I knew what she meant. I kissed her cheek, then Mel's, and then Michael intercepted me and dragged me upstairs to look at some stuff for the comic book. 

I'm not trying to be an asshole here, and I know I'm probably going to sound like one, and it's not that I don't appreciate the effort, because I totally, totally do, but Michael's signing is...not good. Honestly, none of them are very good. Melanie and Lindsay can ask me some basic questions and at least pretend to understand my answers, Molly is coming along, Emmett's got a somewhat decent vocabulary, even if his grammar is atrocious, Ben is totally patient and never just gives up and says never mind, which a lot of people will do, and Ted's reception is pretty good, meaning he can understand it a lot better than he can produce signs himself. But...none of them are at the point where I can really hold a conversation with them without someone interpreting or a lot of writing and gesturing, which would be sort of okay except that none of them really seem to _get_ that? And that's where I feel like an asshole, because I think they all believe they're better than they are, and I don't want to be the guy who comes in like hey, I realize you've done me this enormous favor learning a second language so you can communicate with me, but I actually still can't fucking understand what you're saying.

So anyway, by the time Michael had talked me through his latest plot idea and shown me his horrible (I'm not being mean here—he knows they're horrible, it's okay) mock-ups of the art he had in mind, I was so completely exhausted from trying to work out what the hell he was trying to sign that I just wanted to flop down on the bed that was once his and once mine and go to sleep for a million years. Plus I was still all out of sorts from the nightmare and not getting enough sleep last night, which my stupid epileptic brain does not know how to cope with, and Debbie always insists on getting a real Christmas tree and even though I was upstairs and had taken like five Claritin in preparation my allergies were already driving me insane. 

Michael said, **What's up, are you okay?**

So I shook myself up and slapped on a smile because Jesus Christ, Justin, we already have Brian here to be the Grinch, we don't need you being an asshole on Christmas, and I told Michael out loud what I thought of all his ideas even though I was congested as all hell and my voice probably sounded like I was underwater, and that seemed to reassure Michael enough. We went back downstairs, and I had a nice moment of Christmas spirit standing on the stairs watching Brian make Gus laugh by violently snapping the head off a gingerbread man. Okay, so it's not that Christmassy, but A Christmas Story was playing on the TV behind him, so we'll count it.

Brian saw me and got up and met me on the stairs. **You look like Rudolph,** he said, and kissed my nose.

**I'd set fire to that fucking tree if I thought it wouldn't make my throat close up.**

**We don't have to stay long.** He squeezed my hands. **Don't sign too much. I have plans for that hand.**

So yeah. That's another thing that had been going on in my life. Speaking of my stupid epileptic brain!

I don't think anyone who hasn't done a pharmacy run for me even knows about it, because I don't have what most people think of when they think of epilepsy—y'know, falling down on the floor, grand mal seizures, the whole nine. I have had a few of those, but at the point they'd all been in the weeks right after I was bashed. I don't remember them. What I do remember is the doctor explaining to me, after it had been months and my hand was still twitching if I overused it, that after a massive head trauma you can develop post-traumatic epilepsy, I guess because my post-traumatic stress disorder needed a friend, and that sometimes people don't even notice seizures like mine because they're so small. You don't lose consciousness or have to rush off to the hospital or anything like that. You just kind of sit and wait for it to be over. They can be brought on by all kinds of things—stress, lack of sleep, flashing lights—and my neurologist didn't know if mine were centered around my right hand because that's where my brain was sending all its signals all the time or if that was just God deciding this whole “complex partial seizure” thing wasn't really high stakes enough and he needed to up the ante. “There's a lot about the brain we don't know,” he'd said, and, well, at that point I couldn't sleep for an hour without a nightmare and I couldn't be out in public without feeling like I was dying, so you didn't need to tell me that. 

But it was manageable. As long as I took my meds every day, it got to where I could get through a whole day without my hand ever acting up as long as I didn't try to draw by hand for too long, and even if it did it was usually minor enough that I could work through it. Sometimes I had issues with seeing spots or tunnel vision if it got really bad, but that wasn't such a big deal.

It's not like I relied solely on my hand and my eyes to be able to communicate. What a fucking nightmare that would have been, right?

So, once again. God decided it really just wasn't high stakes enough. 

It had really, really started to become an issue a few months before, to the point where I had to budget how much I signed in a day. To the point where when it got really bad, my vision would be so fucked that I couldn't understand what was being said to me.

Everyone kept telling me how well I was handling it. 

That's me. Taking everything in stride. Nothing I can't manage! What's one more, one more, one more, one fucking more setback, right?

Smile, Sunshine. It's Christmas.

Brian and I went back to the couch and I snuggled under his arm and let him interpret for a while instead of trying to figure out what everyone was saying. He doesn't believe me, and he's still so insecure about it, but God, his signing is beautiful. I'm not saying it's perfect or anything, because it isn't—hell, we've only been signing for two years, neither is mine—but he has some sort of natural talent for it. So much of ASL isn't prescriptive, isn't _do these signs in this exact order_ ; it's about using all the space around you in a certain way, figuring out _where_ to sign things, what spot to choose to represent a person or an idea, how to let that concept sit there and sign something else and then come back to it, how to express things that aren't visual in a visual way...it's not easy, it's not straightforward, and he's amazing. I miss his voice sometimes, but God, it's nothing like how I'd miss his signing. Sometimes I can't believe I lasted as long as I did without it, which is dumb because I was hearing and it's not like I knew what I was missing, but...fuck, it's a good thing I didn't know or I would have pulled my ears off years ago.

So anyway, that cheered me up. And then Emmett came out with the food and presented it all like Vanna White, and we ate off paper plates throughout the living room and the kitchen because there was no way we could all fit around the table. Mom and Molly came, and that was nice, even though stuff is still kind of weird with them not being able to sign so well and now with the whole not telling me I had a half brother thing, but I hugged them and watched my mom's lips and tried to smile in the right places. 

My allergies were still driving me up a wall, and it would have been way easier to sign and just make Brian voice for me, but it was like he was too lazy to do it or something because every time I tried to sign he'd kind of bat my hands away, which is is so super rude and also gross since I'd been sneezing all over them, but when has being rude or gross ever stopped Brian Kinney. Everyone opened presents after dinner—I got this really soft scarf and some new oil pastels—and then we ate cake and drank coffee and lazed around. Ted and Blake made out under the mistletoe. Emmett and Drew slow-danced to music I didn't think was playing, but what did I know. Michael and Ben were hassling Hunter about something, and Gus and J.R. were ignoring everyone to play with their new shit. Mom and Molly had to leave early to to go to some neighborhood gift exchange. Debbie tidied up in the kitchen even though everyone kept telling her to leave it, and Carl tried to fix some problem with the Christmas lights. Mel and Lindsay were having some kind of argument, but every time I tried to figure out what was going on everyone would tell me **Don't worry about it, Justin** like I was five.

Brian pulled me into the backyard and lit us some cigarettes and we watched the snow fall. I looked at him, his profile sharp in the porch light, like he was drawn from a long, unbroken line. He was so goddamn beautiful. He still is, he'd like me to specify.

“I love you,” I said to him, and he wrinkled his nose and shook his head playfully. “Yeah, you're right,” I said. “Never mind.”

He stole my cigarette and gave me a kiss I was much, much too stuffed-up for, but I didn't mind.

Michael came out a minute later, I guess because he thought we had pot, I don't know. He explained it all to Brian, but when Brian started to interpret I just shrugged and waved him off. I don't know. I was so fucking tired at that point, and if Michael was going to come out and talk like I wasn't even here then he could just do it, whatever. I sat down on the steps and smoked and let them have their conversation, and I felt bad about it because I know Brian hates talking in English in front of me, and out of the corner of my eye I could see him keep glancing at me like he was ready to start interpreting again as soon as I looked his way.

It was cold as shit out there, obviously, so we didn't stay outside for long. Brian came over eventually and tapped me on the arm, and the three of us started to head in, but he stopped me and put his hands on his shoulders and just looked at me, and God, I knew he was trying to figure out what was going on with me, but how was I supposed to explain it to him when I didn't even know what was going on with me.

So I just said, “It's okay,” because what else was I supposed to do? Say hey, sorry I'm acting like kind of a pouty little bitch right now, but I'm overwhelmed as hell and I don't know what anybody's talking about and being around all these hearing people who are supposed to be my family is stressing me the fuck out, and I know how much they love me and how much they're trying but the thing is that they're just not trying _enough_ , and I keep thinking about all the bullshit my dad said to me a few days ago and wondering if Luke is having an okay Christmas, and also I'm still kind of thinking about my arms getting ripped off? You can't say that.

I gave him a a small smile, and he gave me one back. 

He brushed the snow off of me and brought me inside and said, **Will you voice for me?**

 **Yeah.** I love doing that, honestly, as ambivalent as I am about talking otherwise, because it means that Brian's first priority is me and whether I understand and everyone else is just an afterthought. It's been a million years, but Brian choosing me still gives me butterflies like it did my first night at Babylon. I'm a sucker.

He waved his arms to get their attention and said, **I'm taking him home before he sneezes so many times his head explodes. Deb, just get a fucking fake one next year. We really have to convince you to embrace something tacky? And Lindsay, give it a rest already. Getting Gus a water gun is not going to turn him into a serial killer. Ted, nobody wants to see that. And Michael, yes, Hunter has probably been blowing off classes to sleep off hangovers, and if you keep ragging on him like a mother hen I'm going to be forced to start telling him the kind of shit you did when you were in _high school._ Now, hopefully you're all annoyed enough at that that you'll let us leave without smothering us in hugs and kisses, because I've had more than enough merriment for one day and Justin needs to go drown himself in Benadryl.**

That didn't, of course, stop them from smothering us in hugs and kisses, but it did catch me up on everything I'd missed, which I knew was really the point of all that, and...God, I just loved him so fucking much. It was all I could to not pull him into some Ted and Blake impression right there in front of everyone.

Once we'd finally extracted ourselves, we climbed into the car and sighed in unison. He chuckled, then reached over me and dug around in the glove box for a pack of tissues to toss at me.

 **God, I am such a mess,** I said.

**How's the hand?**

**It's fine, since you didn't let me fucking use it at all!**

He shot me a cryptic look and pulled out of the driveway.

 **Shit,** I said. **You must have some night planned.**

He just shrugged.

I spent the whole drive home picturing Brian turning me inside out and fucking counting down the minutes until we were home, and by the time we got to the loft I was practically vibrating. But right before he was about to pull open the door, he stopped and looked at me thoughtfully. 

**I may have made a mistake here,** he said.

I narrowed my eyes. **What did you do?**

 **I said it MAY be a mistake,** he said. **I'm not sure.** He dabbed at my face with a tissue. **I wasn't expecting for you to be feeling this crappy. Also you kind of look like shit.**

**Is someone coming over?**

He stuck his tongue in his cheek, gave me a “here goes nothing” look, and tugged open the door to the loft. And there, signing **SURPRISE!** in unison, were Gregory, Jasper, Lisa, Martin, Abigail, Meredith, Kyle, and Tom. All my closest Deaf friends, inside the fucking loft, which was—and this was maybe the most ridiculous part— _decorated._ It wasn't like Deb's house or anything, but there was some tinsel hanging off the rafters, and the whole place smelled like egg nog and bourbon. 

Everyone kind of jostled me and started signing and Gregory came and kissed my cheek, and then Brian's, but I was just staring at Brian. I don't think I could have physically looked away from him in that moment if my life depended on it.

He tilted his head a little, watching me too.

 **You got me Deaf Christmas?** I somehow managed to sign.

He shrugged. **Surprise** he signed.

There was no mistletoe in the doorway—Brian would _never_ —but God, I kissed him like there was. And in that minute, I was sure I couldn't possibly love him even a tiny bit more.

That, of course, turned out to be bullshit, but we'll get to that. 

Brian went to mix drinks and kind of hang out on the sidelines—Deaf parties are still a lot for him, kind of the way hearing parties are for me—but he shooed me away every time I tried to hang out with him so I eventually stopped worrying about it and just dove in into this pile of hugs and signing and laughter and...God, it was like coming up for air. Lisa and Kyle started making out at one point, so that was a trip, and Gregory was getting completely wasted, and at some point someone turned on some kind of music with a loud bass beat and we were all dancing. I don't know how Brian didn't kill us. 

And he didn't, not at all. He just made drinks for people and smiled indulgently while Abigail hit on him and signed with so much self-confidence that it made my fucking soul hurt, I loved him so much, and..God, I'd had a lot to drink at that point, and I was kind of teetering on the edge of falling apart anyway, and then my hand started to act up. I hid it for a while and tried to just give it a rest, but it wasn't fixing itself, and I went to the bathroom to stretch it in private and while I was in there everything just kind of hit me like a truck, how fucking happy I was about this party, how exhausted I was from the last one, how goddamn frustrated I was about my hand, and I started crying.

The door opened a minute later. I tried to clean myself up as quickly as I could, but it was just Brian.

He looked at me like he wasn't quite sure exactly who I was. Confused, slightly concerned, slightly amused. **I was just coming to tell you Gregory definitely wants to fuck me and I'm going to try to make that happen,** he said. **But not if you're going to weep about it.**

I laughed a little and wiped my eyes. **Fuck you.**

He closed the door and leaned against the wall. **What's with you?**

“This is so fucking nice. I can't believe you did this. And we're going to be leaving soon and I'm going to miss them so fucking much, and I feel so goddamn guilty I'm not as close with everyone else anymore, this feels like I'm cheating on them, but I'm so fucking happy, and I just...” 

He, of course, immediately knew what it meant that I was speaking. **Let me see.**

I held my hand out. “It's not bad.”

He looked it over. **All right. After I fuck Gregory I'm going to kick everyone out.**

“It's early.”

**Yeah, well, you're clearly going through some psychotic break, so I'm thinking you should turn in early.**

“Gregory is not going to fuck you.”

Brian kissed my hand, then put it down to check his watch. **Forty-five minutes from now, I will have deflowered your little friend.**

“He's not a virgin.”

**Yeah, once he's had me, he'll think he was. You would know.**

“That doesn't even make any—” 

**Bye, dear. Have fun sobbing over what a great sex partner I am.**

I don't even know where he did it—out in the hallway??—but he totally fucked Gregory. Unbelievable! I never thought that was going to work. Gregory wanted to tell me all about it later, too, how great it was and everything, and I was like, duh? 

After everyone had left and Brian and I were cleaning up, he asked me how my hand was doing and I shrugged. “It's frustrating,” I said. “I'm frustrated.”

Brian thought it over. **Want to get in the car, and I'll drive really fast and roll the windows down and you can scream as loud as you want?**

I went over and hugged him around the waist. “Thanks. But no, I don't want to scream.” I sighed. “I just want to sign.”

He kissed my forehead. 

**

My next little breakdown to tell Lydia about was courtesy of, of all people, Ethan Gold. 

It was a couple days after New Year's. Brian and I were going up to New York later that week to look at apartments, and he'd told me not to get groceries for that week since we were going to be traveling, but it was only Wednesday and we weren't leaving until Friday and there was no fucking food in the loft, so I was at the grocery store getting enough food to tide us over until then, and also some snacks for the road. I was debating between two kinds of gummi worms when I saw him at the end of the aisle, and he was wearing this face that had me think he might have been calling me for a while. 

The most awkward thing about going Deaf is _telling_ people. People who just met me don't know, if I'm speaking, because my voice sounds the same as it always does--well, not so much anymore, but we'll get to that eventually. And anyone who knew me before, they're all so _sorry_ , and then you end up having to comfort them for something that happened to _you_ , and something you don't even think is a bad thing, and...God, it's just so exhausting. 

And awkward. Did I mention awkward? Because when you're typing something on your phone and holding it out to them instead of speaking, and there's that moment when they're wondering what the fuck is going on, and then that other moment when they're reading what you wrote and they think you're joking...God, it's such a drag. I need to just wear a shirt that says HI, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ME IN YEARS I HAVE A SURPRISE, I AM NOW DEAF and save everyone some time.

But I was not wearing that shirt, so I went through the whole process with Ethan, and it was even worse than usual because he's a musician so obviously going Deaf is the world's worst thing as far as he's concerned, and he got teary and wouldn't stop hugging me and asking me lots of questions I couldn't lipread and the whole thing was such a fucking process. And I was kind of annoyed and out of sorts about it but basically fine, and then I was walking back to the loft with the groceries and I just started crying out of the fucking blue, and I was curled up in bed still crying when Brian got home. At least I put the perishables away.

Brian came over to the bed and craned his head down. **Are you dying?** he said, like he was mildly interested.

I sat up and wiped my face. **I ran into Ethan.**

 **Is _he_ dying?** That seemed to interest him more.

 **I don't remember what violins sound like,** I said, crying again. **I'm never going to remember.**

I thought he would make fun of me, but he didn't. His face kind of softened, and he took off his shoes and loosened his tie and got onto the bed with me and let me cry for a while. He didn't say anything, because what really is there to say? It's not like it really mattered if I remembered violins, and it's not like anything was going to make me less Deaf. Things were just...what they were.

 **Justin?** he said after a while.

**Yeah?**

**Violins are really, really bad.**

I started laughing, and that made me cry some more, and we stayed like that for a while, and eventually he got up and made dinner out of all the shit I bought, so that was nice. 

I'm happy. I swear. I just...

It's not simple. 

**

After that, we went to New York. We were supposed to be picking out an apartment, which I had stupidly thought might be kind of fun and romantic, and ended up mostly consisting of each of us wanting to strangle the other one. Turns out when you've lived together for four years in a place only one of you picked out, you each bring in some baggage about wanting to make decisions on the next place! Shocking, I know. Brian thought his taste had gotten us this far, so why tempt fate, and I thought maybe I'd actually get to have some input after feeling like a guest in the loft all this time, and then he got all pissy about me saying I felt like a guest and if a guest left all his shit around all the time like I do he'd be thrown out in a heartbeat, so then I pointed out that I'm always the one walking around picking up _his_ laundry, and anyway we did this over and over in several different apartments in several different neighborhoods in front of several different brokers and the whole thing was super, super fun.

But this isn't a story about apartment hunting, so all you really need to know is that we were both on our last nerves with the other one and we eventually found a place in the Upper West Side that we both loved, but we were still pissy at each other just for sport or whatever. Which honestly also isn't really relevant, but probably at some point you're going to wonder where the fuck we were planning to live, and I have to include the part where we were assholes to each other because this is a really sappy story otherwise and I feel like I'm talking about, like, some imaginary boyfriend if I don't include a section with Brian being a control freak drama queen, since in-between him being the amazing guy who throws me surprise Deaf Christmas and comforts me about violin music I have to put up with this shit every day of my goddamn life.

Anyway, while we were in New York we saw Daphne, who we only overlapped with for one day before she flew out to France to see her mom, and we met up with some Deaf friends of Gregory's who lived there and they were amazing and welcoming and made me feel more okay about leaving my Pittsburgh Deaf friends. On our second to last day in New York we were going to go to the Met and then dinner, but we didn't have any plans before that. Brian wanted to go uptown to see Yankee Stadium and I one hundred and thousand percent did not, so after breakfast and a shower fuck he got into a cab and I crawled into bed and tried to figure out the subtitles on the TV.

At some point I dozed off and when I woke up it was already starting to get dark, which happens early that time of year but still, I thought it was weird that Brian wasn't back yet. I hunted down my phone, and I had four missed calls, two from Brian and two from a number I didn't know, and two voicemails. 

So, a couple things weird there, because first of all, obviously no one should be leaving me voicemails, but also the calls from Brian weren't Facetime calls, they were...regular, hearing-person phone calls. And no texts. And when I tried to Facetime him back, he didn't answer.

My heart was starting to beat faster at this point. I got my laptop out and looked up the number the other two missed calls were from, and it was the number for the emergency room at Mt. Sinai West.

In retrospect, obviously, there are things I could have done here. I could have gotten a concierge to listen to the message and write down what it said. I could have texted my mom and had her call the hospital and find out what was going on. There are plenty of rational solutions that you don't really consider when a hospital tried to call you and you partner is missing.

I ran outside. It took me forfuckingever to get a cab, and I kept thinking I should give up and get on the subway, but I didn't know how to get to the hospital or even where the nearest subway station was. Finally a cab picked me up, and I got in and probably just yelled “Mt. Sinai West emergency room I'm Deaf please don't ask me questions” but fuck if I remember. At that point, I was nothing but worst case scenarios. I was being called to identify Brian's body. He'd been confused and out of it in his last few moments and just wanted to hear my voice one more time so he called me and I didn't pick up and he died having no fucking idea how much I loved him, and for some reason that reminded me of the fact that I never heard him say I love you out loud, and look, it's fine, it's fine, but in that moment, Oh God, oh fucking God.

I threw some money at the cab driver and ran through the doors of the hospital and up to the front desk where a girl who looked about twelve was behind a computer. “I need to know if there's a patient here,” I said. “I got a call, but I'm Deaf, I don't...”

She gave me a weird look and said something to me.

“I don't know what you're saying, I mean it, I'm Deaf, I don't...please can you just. His name is Brian Kinney. K-I-N-N-E-Y.” 

She typed, excruciatingly slowly, and I bounced on my feet and looked around the waiting room. There was a woman near me sobbing, and a baby who looked like he was screaming, and someone being wheeled in on a gurney and holyshit _somuchblood_ —

The girl looked up and said something to me, and I felt like I was losing my fucking mind.

I said, “No, you don't understand, I'm Deaf, I don't know what you're saying to me.”

So she said it louder. Of fucking course she did. I swear to God I thought I was going to throw up.

“Where is he?” I said. “Is he here? Is he even alive?”

She pointed down a hallway.

“Okay. Okay. Thank you. Is he...do you know how he is, is he...”

She just shook her head and shrugged.

Oh God oh God oh God.

I rushed down the hall, past a gurney with a kid fucking screaming and past that sobbing woman who tried to talk to me, and God, I thought I was going to come out of my skin. I'm not good with shit like this, not since the bashing, really still can't handle blood, still get kind of weird if I work with red paint for too long, but this wasn't about me this was about Brian and I needed to _get your fucking shit together, Justin._

There was another desk at the end of this hallway, and around it was a fucking madhouse. Kids swarmed the waiting room, people bent over in chairs clutching themselves, someone was vomiting, someone on a gurney looked gray and still and oh my God where was Brian, _where's Brian._

I got to the front desk and tried to get someone's attention but no one would look at me. “I need some help, please can someone—” 

The nurse held up her finger and someone pushed past me from behind me— _don't touch me_ and demanded something of her, and she started talking to him instead.

I said, “No no, please, I need help, I'm looking for—” 

She said something to me.

“I'm sorry, I don't, I don't know what you said, I'm Deaf, could you write it down or...I'm looking for Brian Kinney, I think he's on this floor, I'm Deaf and I don't know what's going on but I think Brian Kinney is here, please can you just, can you tell me where to find him.”

The nurse didn't even look up at me when she spoke. 

“No, I can't...I'm Deaf, I don't—” 

A nurse raced past me and down the hall and she ran into me on her way, her shoulder against mine, and it was too much, everything was so fucking huge and terrifying and nobody was fucking listening!

I said, “P-please, if you just look at me maybe I can read your lips, I...”

She looked up and said something that maybe was, “Are you family?”

“Am I family?” I asked, and I probably sounded fucking hysterical at this point, but I couldn't help it, I just wanted to grab her and shake her until she fucking _brought me to Brian._

She nodded.

“I'm his husband, we got married...they told me he was here. Please, is he is here?”

She said something and I didn't get it, not a word, and then she turned to this nurse next to her and said something to her and the other one laughed, fucking _laughed,_ and that was it, I was just fucking bawling in the middle of the emergency room, because I hate hospitals and I hate nurses and I hate hearing people and I needed my FUCKING husband. 

One of the nurses put her hand on my shoulder and said something to me and I said, “Please, can you just tell me if he's alive, I don't know if he's alive, I don't understand what's going on, I need somebody to help me, Brian Kinney, his name is Brian Kinney, he's thirty-seven, h-he...I think someone here tried to call me from his phone because he wouldn't call me because he knows I can't hear him because, he's my husband, we're from Pittsburgh w-we're just here visiting we don't, he doesn't belong here, I'm supposed to be with him, I promised him that I was going to be with him you don't understand.” I felt my voice rising and I knew I was being so loud but I didn't know how else to make them listen. “He was scared a few years ago and I made this promise and he was there with me the whole time I was sick, and he doesn't like hospitals because one time something bad happened and I need to be with him and he, he has dark hair and his blood type is O negative and...I don't know what else to tell you, he's my husband and please can somebody tell me where he is, please, please?”

I knew people were staring at me. I knew I was screaming and I wasn't making any sense, but I just...you have to understand that at that moment I really thought he was dead. I really, really did. 

And then the nurse wrote down a room number for me and she pointed down the hall and I fucking _ran._ And I almost tripped on this whole pile of shit in the hallway outside of Brian's room—a blanket, a sock, a bedpan, a broken fucking lamp—but I'll explain that in a minute. What matters is that Brian was there, and he was alive.

He was watching the doorway intently and as soon as I got there he held one arm out to me and signed the other against his chest, forcefully, over and over: **Fine fine fine fine fine fine.** His hand reaching out to me opened and closed in a fist, like he was trying to grab me out of thin air.

I said, **Can I—** because I didn't want to hurt him.

He reached out so far he almost fell out of the bed. **Yes, come here, come here.**

I rushed over to him and he pulled me into him without any hesitation, and he gripped my shoulder blade and signed against my chest instead, and I don't know if he was still telling me he was okay or if he was trying to will it to be true for me, too. **Fine fine fine fine fine.**

I forced myself away enough to look at him, but no, he didn't look fine at all. He was so fucking pale, like nothing I'd ever seen on him, and he was crying. And I could count on one hand the number of times I've seen Brian cry. He wasn't sobbing or anything, so he was managing all this a lot better than I was, but he was definitely crying, and...he was really, really pale. Like a ghost.

I said, “No no no you're not fine, you're crying, you're not fine.”

He shook his head. **It's not that,** he said, and he wiped my face off roughly and gave me this little laugh, except he was still crying, and every part of me that wasn't touching him _hurt._

**No, what hurts, why are you crying?**

**I'm _fine_ ,** he said, and he gave this little shrug when I was still searching his face and said, **I could hear you screaming your little heart out out there,** and Oh, God, it was me, he was crying over me.

He cupped my face in his hands and kissed my cheeks and signed **fine fine fine fine fine.**

I got the whole story eventually in pieces, once I'd calmed down enough to like, process information again, but there's no reason to leave you hanging, so here's what happened.

Brian was in a cab on his way back when the car got T-boned. His cab driver was in pretty bad shape—he ended up being okay though—so an ambulance was coming, which was good because Brian's foot was broken. His cell phone was in his briefcase which got thrown out of the car in the crash, and he couldn't get to it because of the whole broken foot situation, and as soon as they got to the hospital they took his shit away from him and he hadn't seen it since. He told them not to call me, to call Michael instead and give him the information and let Michael text it to me, and as far as he knew that was how it went down, but...well. 

So he was just sitting in his room enjoying some morphine, waiting for them to put his cast on, and then he heard me out in the waiting room. And he said he barely recognized my voice. He said I didn't sound like me at all.

And that's when Brian maybe kind of lost it a little bit, so at least I wasn't alone in my journey or whatever. 

He couldn't get up, because his fucking foot was broken. And he sat there listening to me getting more and more upset and he kept screaming at everyone who came by to go get me and bring me to him, but I think he forgot to explain that it was because I was Deaf? He was not really on his game about the whole thing, and as soon as someone tried to ask him questions he told them to shut up because he was trying to hear what I was saying. And he started throwing everything he could get his hands on in hopes I would see shit flying through the hallway and realize that was him calling me, like when he wants to bring him coffee and he's too lazy to get out of bed so he just starts flinging clothes across the loft. And then when none of that worked, when he was still sitting helplessly in that bed listening to me fucking break down fifty feet from him, he just started yelling my name as loudly as he possibly could, because maybe I would hear it if it was loud enough, or because maybe he couldn't not call for me right then.

God, when I realized he was crying because of me, I felt so fucking bad. He was the one in the hospital and here he was fucking comforting me about it. So I forced myself back into one piece and kind of pawed all over him, doing triage, and he kept promising that he was okay, that they were going to put a cast on his foot and he'd be on crutches for a few weeks but he was _fine,_ and would I please sit down, would I please breathe.

The doctor came in a little while after that and Brian asked if I wanted an interpreter, but I shook my head because honestly the fewer people who saw me this dysfunctional the better. I immediately regretted it when I realized that meant Brian would be interpreting his own medical information to me, and I was so, so scared he was downplaying it. 

“His ankle doesn't need surgery and you're keeping him overnight to watch for internal bleeding,” I said to the doctor. “That's what you said?”

He smiled a little at me and nodded, and Brian squeezed my hand so tight. He'd told me the truth. God, he was amazing.

“Since you're married, we can get you a cot if you want to stay here overnight,” the doctor said to me, and Brian interpreted this but then immediately said, **Absolutely not, you're going back to the hotel.**

“I'll let you two work this out,” the doctor said.

 **The fuck I am,** I said after he left.

**Your meds aren't here and you're not skipping them, and you are not sleeping in some cot in a hospital freaking out and not sleeping when you have a seizure condition and also the worst fucking immune system I've ever seen. No. No way.**

**You think I'm going to be able to sleep if I leave you here?**

**Well, you better fucking try, because you're not staying here. It's out of the question.**

And God, just like that I was bawling again. And I mean like seriously, seriously fucking sobbing, like nothing I've done in years. And I'd _just_ had that whole thing about how I was going to try to hold myself together so Brian didn't have to comfort me, and poof, there that went out the window! And I knew he was okay now, too, and still here I was crying like I was at his funeral or something. I was such a goddamn mess. I honestly don't know how he puts up with me.

And he just sighed and reached out for my arm and pulled me until I was on the bed with him and had me curl up into his chest, and he was probably trying to talk to me but I'd clearly forgotten how to use my eyes for any kind of non-crying purpose. Once the tears dried up I just told him that I loved him over and over, and he let me, even if every time I said it he looked like it was hurting him, he let me.

I think sometimes Brian manages to convince himself that I don't love him as much as he loves me. I don't mean that he does it so he gets to feel like he's not appreciated or something like that; I think it's honestly comforting for him to believe that that's true, like he gets to tell himself that means he's saving me from something. I don't really know why he thinks it's true—maybe because I'm the one who generally does better when we're apart for any length of time, or because loving him isn't as painful for me as loving me is for him, or maybe just because he doesn't think he deserves to be loved the way I love him. I don't know. But I think he really believes it sometimes, and then there are moments like this one where he can't keep it up anymore. And I know he doesn't like it, but I think it's good for people to know how much they're loved. Especially when they're lying in hospital beds.

Not that I was doing it right then in some sort of strategic way. I was just a fucking goddamn mess.

He was serious about making me go back to the hotel, though. I wouldn't go until they gave him his phone and we had it put in his records that they had to text me, not call, if there was an emergency, and when I got back to the room I still turned the volume up on my phone as loudly as it would go, as if that made a difference, and then made sure the vibrate was on and lay down with it under my cheek. I really thought I wouldn't be able to sleep, but I guess I'd worn myself out with all the damn crying at that point, because after a long stretch of dreams about Brian being ripped away from me, I woke up with a start to him standing over me, crutches under his arms, his hand on my shoulder.

I sat up. **No internal bleeding?** I said.

He shook his head and sat down on the bed, and I buried my face in his chest and tried to control my breathing so I wouldn't start crying again. He peeled my face off him eventually and said, **Did you take your meds last night?**

**Of course.**

**You feeling okay? You look like shit.**

I stared at him. **Are you under the impression you look great right now? How are YOU feeling?**

 **I'm fine. My foot hurts.** He slowly maneuvered himself next to me on the bed and we lay there looking at each other. **That was a goddamn nightmare,** he said.

**I don't think car accidents are usually a good time.**

He shook his head. **Not that. God. I don't think I've ever seen you that scared.**

 **I don't think I've ever been that scared,** I admitted, and he winced like I'd punched him.

I wonder sometimes if we're going to go our whole lives like this, just feeling guilty about this...this thing that we do to each other, about the amount that we mean to each other. A lot of our life is just taking turns feeling awful about the fact that the other one wants anything to do with us. I don't know if that's because of something fundamentally broken in us—Brian's abusive childhood, my past history with baseball bats—or just because we love each other in a way that's...that's bigger than two people were supposed to love each other. I know that sounds stupid. But it's no more stupid than people who walk around thinking they're soulmates, right? And this is kind of the opposite; I feel like Brian and I just weren't meant to be, that it couldn't have been anyone's good idea for two people to need each other the way Brian and I do. It's not reasonable. It's barely survivable. And it makes all the other assholes who think what they have is some kind of remarkable love look super pathetic in comparison, which isn't very fair to them.

But it's just...nobody has ever been able to understand the way Brian and I tear each other apart. 

And lying there on that bed next to him, all I wanted was for him to not care that I had been scared, and all he wanted was for me to not have been scared over him.

Except if either of those things actually happened, we'd probably literally die. You can't cut this cord at this point. It's too late. 

Thank God it's too late.

He said, **Something in me just...snapped when I heard you like that. I could hear all those nurses telling you to calm down, telling you to wait....and I was yelling at this orderly, I said, you see that blonde kid, _he's scared, go get him_ , and just...nobody got it, nobody understood that he couldn't just call you over. You gotta start wearing hearing aids just so people will believe you. Or we can fuck up your voice.** He kissed me. **Maybe I could do some damage to your vocal cords.**

I leaned into him. **I'm sorry. I shouldn't have freaked out. It...it was stupid of me to panic like that.**

He rolled his eyes. **You are damn lucky you were in a coma when I was pulling my little Walk to Remember shit in a hospital hallway. Trust me, you've got nothing on me.**

That made me feel a little better. Plus it meant I could tease Brian about knowing A Walk to Remember for the rest of the day, and that would help.

 **Come on,** he said to me. **We've got to pack.**

I slept on his shoulder on the train and didn't have any nightmares.

**

So that would be a nice place to end the Winter of Crying, right? Sweet little emotional reunion in our hotel room, no nightmares on the train, everything's on the up and up.

Yeah, okay.

Brian on crutches was—and I know, this is absolutely the shock of the century, I'm calling up the local news stations now—an asshole. He snapped at Cynthia, he snapped at his clients, he snapped at Michael and Debbie and everyone else who brought food over to the loft to try to help us out, and he snapped at me. The second I tried to do goddamn anything for him, like, oh, I don't know, _get something,_ I was babying him, and would I fucking cut it out already, and I was going to make myself sick and _don't come crying to me, Sunshine._

I'm sure you know how that's going to end. 

It didn't help either of our moods that I'd sort of given up sleeping and he knew it, and I knew that he knew it, and he knew that I knew that he knew it, but that didn't really matter because it's not like I'd sat down and decided, hmm, you know what would be fun, what if I added some insomnia to the mix? I just was so goddamn anxious all the time, and when I closed my eyes all I could see was either Brian getting hit by a car or a reminder of how fucking useless I was without a hearing person there to babysit me, and neither of those were really nice comforting thoughts I wanted to curl up with at night.

 **You weren't useless,** Brian said, exasperated as shit, and I couldn't blame him because we'd been over this a million times. **You found me. You did it, all on your own. And Jesus fucking Christ, for the last time, I'm FUCKING FINE.**

And because he's Brain Kinney, in-between telling me not to do the slightest thing for him, he was complaining constantly about how his foot hurt and he couldn't do shit and the crutches were unattractive and he hadn't fucked anyone but me for two weeks and how was he going to survive and oh, listen to me recount for Michael for the eightieth time the story of my near death experience and what a fucking hero wounded soldier I am but _don't you dare ask me if I want a bottle of water, I can get it myself._

So yeah, he wasn't exactly a peach to live with, but neither was I, and I hadn't just been in a fucking car accident, so there was plenty of self-loathing for me to throw on the pile as well, which I'm sure made me even better company. Basically for two weeks Brian and I did an excellent job staying alive despite how much we wanted to kill each other, or, probably more accurately, how much he wanted to kill both of us and I wanted to crawl into a hole and never be seen by human eyes. 

Oh, and in addition to giving up sleeping, I'd also given up leaving the apartment, because I was panicking in crowds again and because my hand was so useless from not sleeping that I couldn't sign and I was too embarrassed to be seen by anyone. So not only was I irritating to be around, but I was irritating to be around literally all the time!

Brian and I were just locked into this dance of trying to take care of each other without letting the other one take care of us, him because he, I don't know, either genuinely hates it or has refused love for so long that he's convinced himself he genuinely hates it, and me because I felt so goddamn guilty that something that should have been about him and what he needed had turned into, once again, another episode of what my dad had so charmingly been calling The Justin Show, and every time Brian looked at me with those eyes and asked me to please, please try to get some sleep, please rest my hand, please drink some water, I felt like I was going to lose it. _Don't you see what a piece of shit drama queen I am?_ I wanted to yell at him. _Aren't you sick of what a fucking worthless, needy pathetic little princess I fucking always find a way to be?_

People don't warn you for how humiliating it is to need things. They just drill it into you, subtly, your entire life, and then all of a sudden you're disabled and you're supposed to be out of the blue fine with accepting the help you'd been told up until now you were supposed to be too proud for. 

And you know they still don't want you to accept it, not really. They want you to climb Mount Everest with no hands, or win an Olympic medal with no lungs, all that motivational shit, that's what they really want from disabled people. Inspiration porn, Gregory calls it. They see us limping along, and it inspires them to keep their abled asses in gear because wow, if the cripple can do it, what's my excuse?

And like, I don't know what your excuse is! Why the fuck do I care about your stupid life? Not that anyone was out there getting inspired by me anyway. I wasn't climbing Everest. I couldn't even get Brian to let me get him a bowl of cereal. 

So we were just sitting on the couch one day, watching one of those old movies he loved because letting him pick the movie was about as much caretaking as he would consent to, and my vision started blurring out on the edges, and then going dark. And then the whole right side of my body got that pins and needles feeling, and the next thing I knew my entire right arm was shaking, from my shoulders down to my fingers, and I felt muscles in my thigh start to jump too, and in my foot.

Brian noticed and paused the movie. **Whoa, shit, okay.**

After that my eyesight got too fucked up to see what he was saying, which has happened a few times before, but it always freaks me the fuck out because what if this time it doesn't go away? I closed my eyes so I didn't have to see everything blurry and dancing around, and I felt him rub his hand firmly up and down my spasming arm, and when that didn't do anything he just put his hand on the back of my neck and waited for it to be over.

It took about four minutes before it stopped, and afterwards I was dizzy and suddenly so, so tired.

 **Yeah, I bet,** Brian said, even though I hadn't said anything. **That's got to take a lot out of a guy. Come on, we're gonna go to bed, okay? I gotcha...**

He picked me up and carried me to the bedroom. He was off crutches at this point and just in a boot, so this wasn't impossible or anything, but I was so out of it that I just knew there was something vaguely wrong with this and I couldn't figure out what it was, and that was really upsetting. I started crying and apologizing while Brian shook out pills and dialed the phone, and I was so sure he was like, going to send me away or something. What can I say, my brain was scrambled eggs right then.

 **I need to call your doctor,** he said. **It's okay. Just lie down and go to sleep.**

I felt like I shouldn't, but I also felt like I couldn't possibly keep my eyes open. It seemed like a minute later that I blinked my eyes open, but the quality of the light in the loft was totally different, and I felt a lot better.

I sat up. “Brian?”

He appeared from the kitchen. **Hey,** he said. **Dr. Bartha wants to see you next week, but he said we don't need to panic or anything.**

I nodded, then dropped my head into my hands. “This is fucking humiliating.”

He limped up the stairs and sat by my feet. **Why?**

I gave him a look and just gestured at myself.

 **You didn't even piss yourself,** he said. **Have we forgotten so soon me having testicular cancer and literally vomiting on you? You have a lot of ground to make up.**

“You can't keep using the one time I took care of you for two months like it's the same as you stuck taking care of me the rest of our fucking lives,” I said. 

He just rolled his eyes at that, probably because he knew I was right and I was the worst.

 **I did tell you you were going to make yourself sick if you didn't fucking sleep,** he said after a minute. **I realize you're all, you know, tragically wilting like a heroine right now, but I thought you should still recognize that I'm extremely smart.**

“And I'm extremely self-involved,” I said.

His eyebrows knit together. **What the fuck are you talking about?**

“You were the one in the accident,” I say. “And still, somehow I manage to make it about poor little Justin and his problems. You fucking deserve some time where you're the one getting taken care of, whether you'll fucking admit it or not, and instead I just...this is just what my dad was talking about. It always has to be about me and what a poor little broken bird I am. I victimize myself. And I just...I fucking feel like I'm using you. Like I'm just keeping you around like a fucking...nursemaid, or at least an audience.”

**Okay, first of all, spare me the gospel according to Craig. The guy's a shithead. You know why he said that stuff to you that's still getting to you?**

“Because it's true and I know it?”

**No, because he chose stuff to stay to you that he _knew would get to you._ They're good at that. That's what they do. They find your insecurities and they make you feel like they're legitimate. It's Craig Taylor's one skill, besides producing Deaf children, and he's only two out of three on that one anyway.**

I shrugged a little.

**Second of all...God, are you really going to make me spell this out?**

“Um. Yes?”

He stood up. **Christ. I can't believe you're making me say this. The things I fucking do to reassure you. They ought to put up a statue of me for this shit.**

I had no idea where the fuck this was going.

 **Okay.** He shook himself off a little, like a diver getting ready to go. **Okay. I can do this.** He clasped his hands together, held them out to me, then let them go and said, **All right, I'm gonna do this.**

“Jesus Christ, Brian, I'm going to be older than you by the time you're done with this.”

**Shut up, twat.**

“You realize I just had a pretty major seizure, right? You should get on with this. Who knows how long I have left.”

He flicked me off with both hands, clapped his palms together and said. **Okay. Here it is.** He paused, took an excruciatingly long breath, and said, **I like taking care of you.**

I stared at him.

 **Yes,** he said. **I'm not saying I don't mind doing it, or I'm willing to do it, or I'm used to doing it, or some shit like that. I like taking care of you. Okay?**

And fuck if I didn't goddamn tear up again! I blame the seizure. 

Brian groaned so hard I could see it and crawled back onto the bed. **Oh my God, I didn't mean _right this second_** he complained, pulling me into his arms. **What is the matter with you lately?**

“People with traumatic brain injuries cry more often,” I said. “It's a thing. There are studies.”

**That'd be very compelling if I had more than a handful of memories of you pre-traumatic brain injury. Christ, you've cried more this month than in the past six years.**

But I couldn't help it. If you...if you don't have a chronic illness, I don't think I can make you understand the kind of fear that comes with it, that everyone around you is just tolerating you, is secretly so, so sick of you, that behind your back they're saying you don't really deserve or even need all the things they do for you, that you're exaggerating, that you're a burden. It's fucking crushing, and it's just constant, and here was Brian, Brian fucking Kinney, so goddamn fucking nervous to tell me that his ideal version of me needed saving sometimes.

It's about ten billion times better than any pathetic “I love you,” could ever hope to be, I'll tell you that much.

And God, you know what...

I know what I just said but sometimes it is fucking hard to believe we weren't meant for each other.

**

Okay, so THAT would be a good stopping point, right? Everything's all nice and wrapped up, the winter of endless crying is over, we ride our hypoallergenic ponies off into the distance?

Did you forget that I started this story sitting on the couch at my therapist's office? If life had already handed me neat and tidy, I wouldn't need professional help.

Brian's foot healed, and I started sleeping again, and my MRI looked okay, so...you know, everything was sort of all right. Brian and I stopped biting each other's heads off in a metaphorical sense and started...well. I'll let you fill in the rest. 

He was busy as hell at work, trying to tie up a million loose ends before the move, and I was trying to get some paintings ready to go in case it took me a while to create anything good once we were up there. I was kind of paranoid that I'd move to New York and like, forget how to paint, I don't know. We'd already started packing up the loft. It was really happening.

One morning my mom texted me to tell me she was in the area and asked if I wanted to get lunch. I met her at this little cafe I love near the loft. I was leaving the apartment again, clearly, but I was still feeling kind of shaky about it, at least when I went out without Brian. He was being patient about it, but I think we were both wondering if I was going to get my shit together in time to live in the most crowded city in America.

Anyway, it was easier to stick to somewhere close to the loft, and it was easier because it was my mom. I haven't told Brian this, because I feel like he'd get kind of wounded about it, I don't know. Probably he wouldn't and I'm just being paranoid. But I can lipread my mom way, way easier than anyone else. You'd think I'd be better at lipreading Brian because I, you know, know his mouth, but he kind of mumbles, plus he's been signing with me since the beginning so I never really got into the habit of needing to read his lips. My mom annunciates really well, and she doesn't talk too fast or too slow, and since she didn't start signing until recently I had to rely on lipreading her for a long time, and also...she's my mom. I know her better than anyone in the whole world.

We talked about Molly, and Brian, and her boyfriend, and what projects I was working on and what houses she'd sold, and eventually we got around to the move.

“It still doesn't feel real that you're leaving,” she said.

“I know. To me either.”

“You've been here your whole life,” she said. “You didn't even want to go away for college.”

“That had a lot less to do with Pittsburgh and more with...the company.”

She laughed. “Still. Everything that's ever happened to you, everything you've ever experienced...it's all here.”

“That's why I have to go,” I said. “It's just...it's too much. I need to live somewhere where I don't worry Chris Hobbs or fucking Dad or...or I don't know, Ethan, is going to be standing on the next block when I turn a corner. I just...I want to live in a place that's not always going to be the place where they set my locker on fire and where they tried to fucking kill me. And...where I got sick. This is always going to be the place where I lost so much shit.”

“I know there are so many bad memories here,” she said. “But there's also Debbie, and your Deaf friends, and Molly and me. And this is where you picked up your first set of fingerpaints, and learned to ride a bike. It's where you met Brian.”

“I know,” I said.

She took my hand. “New York has opportunities for you that Pittsburgh will never have. I'm happy for you, Justin. I want you to go. I just...I don't want you to be running away.”

“I need to not be surrounded by people who knew me when I was hearing,” I said. “It's not even just you guys, it's...everyone. People look at me when I go to the diner, or when I just walk down street. It's, remember, that's Justin, so sad what happened to him, so _sweet_ of Brian to stay with him. I can't keep living in the past like that.” 

“I don't want you to live in the past,” she said. “I just don't want you to feel like you're not allowed to miss anything.” She ran her finger over my knuckles. “I know you're working so had to show everyone how okay you are, Justin. And you want everyone to know that what happened to you isn't a tragedy. And I know that you're happy. But...you are allowed to miss things. You don't have to package this up and make it easy for us hearies to understand. I didn't raise you to fit into a box.”

I ducked my head and swallowed and she waited until I was looking at her. “Did you get all that?” she said.

I nodded. “I think so.”

I gave her a hug outside the restaurant and then went back up to the loft to work on my painting. I was feeling...I don't know, a lot of things, and I was working on this part that needed a lot of detail work, these really straight lines, and then my hand twitched and completely ruined what I'd been working on. 

And everything my mom had said kind of came rushing back to me, and I was just so goddamn frustrated, so sick of shit happening and then not getting better, so sick of being stuck in this goddamn body in this goddamn city, and I sat on the couch and just kind of lost it, and this time it was the middle of the day so Brian didn't appear to save the day, and I didn't even want him to. I couldn't explain to him why I was fucking bawling this time. I barely understood it.

It's just that the reason we were going to New York was so I could paint, and so I could be in a bigger Deaf community, and what if my fucking hand couldn't even do it? What if we were leaving everything that we knew not because I was going to grab onto some big opportunities, but just because I was too fucking chickenshit to face up to all the crap that had happened to me here? 

What if I couldn't do it?

And if Brian were there, he would have just told me, yes you can, you can do it, and I didn't want that right then, because he couldn't undo this truth that I couldn't escape anymore: Leaving Pittsburgh wouldn't fix me. It wouldn't make my hand stop seizing. It wouldn't make me not miss sound anymore. And it wouldn't fix this dark, dark part of me that's been afraid and sad and goddamn broken and given me nightmares every fucking night, this part of my personality that was never even supposed to be there and now it's going to be here forever because of something that happened when I was eighteen years old. 

It was all still going to be there. Nothing was going to change but the zip code. And God, there would be no one I even knew there besides Daphne, who was super busy with school, and Brian, who at some point was going to get sick of me having emotional breakdowns every ten seconds, and then what! It was just going to be me surrounded by hearing people again, eight point five million hearing people.

This was a horrible idea. I was going to let everybody down. What was I fucking _thinking?_

So I sat on the couch feeling sorry for myself for a while, and then I texted Lydia, and then I got up and fixed my fucking painting.

**

 **So I think I need a referral for someone in New York,** I explained to Lydia, after getting through the whole saga. **Because I'm thinking maybe it's possible that all my problems won't magically evaporate when I move to New York. Maybe. We'll see.**

She smiled a little and pulled out an address book. **Let's see. When's the move?**

 **Two weeks from now,** I said.

 **Are you ready?** she asked.

I took a deep breath. **Yes,** I said, and I didn't cry.


End file.
